Jabu is named for Jabu Nene, one of Ardmore's painters, and it starts from an object rather than a drawing. Somandla Ntshalintshali coils rhino vessels by hand; Nene paints them. The markings she applies to those pots have been lifted off the three-dimensional form and laid flat as a vertical stripe, which is a considerable act of translation and accounts for the density of the pattern.
Out of that banding a pair of rhinos emerges, horns dressed and necks ruffed, standing with a formality closer to heraldry than to natural history. They are half concealed by the stripe, so the wall reads first as a woven-looking vertical structure and only afterwards as an animal design. The patterning has the logic of Zulu basketwork behind it: small units, repeated, building into a larger field.
The half drop over a 68.5 cm repeat staggers the stripe between drops, which keeps the rhythm alive across a wide wall and stops the figures lining up in rows. On a standard 0.52 m roll it hangs conventionally. There is enough structure in it to act as a foil to plain upholstery and enough incident to hold a small room alone, so a cloakroom, a study or a back stair all take it well.
